The Citizen, 1998-07-29, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 29, 1998. PAGE 5.
To snooze,
perchance to dream
First, let me establish my position on naps
- afternoon or otherwise.
I am in favour of them - I am in fact a
professional veteran of napping.
I can sleep anywhere, anytime, lying down,
slumped in a chair or just leaning against
something reasonably substantial.
Having said that, allow me to say a few
words in praise of one of the greatest
sleeping machines ever devised by the
ingenious mind of humankind. It is a device
that belongs in the first ranks of that
pantheon of human gizmos including the
laser printer that immortalizes my grocery
list, the kitchen microwave that nukes my
Nescafe, and cameras no bigger than a pack
of cigarettes that spew out photos Karsh
would be proud to keep.
The machine I sing the glories of is
infinitely subtler than all of those.
It is an astonishingly simple device
containing no gears, no batteries, no digitized
Operating Systems - in fact, no moving parts.
Ladies and gentlemen I give you ... the
hammock.
Could anything be simpler and still give'
such pleasure? A hammock is basically a
What has happened
to service?
Last year, when I was over in the Czech
Republic, and trying to hammer some basic
business concepts into their heads, I lost
track of the number of times the conversation
got around to the importance of providing
good service to one's customers. I felt that
such a topic was essential since service is not
a word which springs to mind, for the most
part, when one is doing business in that
country.
Since the Czech government is determined
to get their country into both the European
Union and Nato as quickly as possible, there
are a few important aspects of business that
have to be learned fast. Service is one of
them.
Right now I am starting to get ready to go
back, at the request of the Czechs, for a
second "tour of duty" as it were and I have
been reminded all to frequently of the fact
that Canadians still have a bit to learn as well
as the Czechs.
I am fed up with the banks; I go into some
stores and have to contend with clerks who
think that they are doing you a real favour by
waiting on you. Some stores, play hide and
go seek with me; I have to go looking for a
clerk if there is any chance of my buying
something.
But other countries are just as bad. The
Germans may be famous for their efficiency
but you would start doubting that very
quickly if you went into many German stores
where the clerks seem to have made
strip of cloth with ties on each end. All it
needs to become fully operational is two
immovable objects - trees, walls, a couple of
railings.
That and one human body looking for a
session of divine repose.
You can hang a hammock pretty well
anywhere, but for maximum enjoyment, I
recommend a site overlooking a garden.
Gardens are perfect for hammocks because
hammocks are the very antithesis of the real
garden experience.
You know how gardening freaks crow
about the joys of their chosen pastime - the
spiritual thrill of cultivating tiny seeds and
shepherding them to fruition? The sensual
bliss of running your bare hands through
rich, moist loam?
They are deluded. Gardening is fun the
way golf is fun. Gardening is about sore
knees, scratches from raspberry canes,
blisters on your hands and sunburn on your
neck from too many hours spent grappling
with rose thrip, leaf curl, potato blight, corn
smut and an entire galaxy of creeping,
crawling terrorists ranging from tomato
worms to aphids and not excluding onion
maggots.
A garden, like golf, is about hard work and
perpetual disappointment.
Whereas a hammock is about everything
else.
indifference their byword. A conversation
with some of them brought me to the
realization that they had fallen victim to the
youthful disease of wanting to get to the top
without starting at the bottom. The jobs, they
said, were boring, low paid and beneath their
dignity.
Thus we have a country where the rate of
unemployment is close to 12 per cent and yet
many jobs are either going unfilled or staffed
by people for whom service is a dirty word.
Part of the problem is the fact that labour
markets are frequently too rigid, which is
another way of saying that they are not
flexible enough. This is certainly the case in
Europe where it is frequently very difficult to
sack an unsatisfactory worker with any
degree of alacrity. The workers know this
and thus reflect it in their attitude.
Why do I think that service is so
important? It used to be that many people
practised what is sometimes called brand
loyalty because the company was Canadian. I
recall on numerous occasions being told to
"Buy Canadian."
These lines have, during the past quarter of
a century, become extremely blurred, as has
this exhortation. Do you actually know what
percentage of your car was made in Canada
and what parts in other countries? Is your
favourite company actually owned anymore
by Canadians?
I would hazard a guess that many people
are unaware of the fact that Canada Dry
gingerale, while it originated in Canada, has
not been Canadian owned for many years.
What about Tim Horton's, that ubiquitous
donut shop? Surely that is Canadian! Well,
are you ready. It was sold a little while back
The purpose of the hammock? There's the
beauty - it has none. Unlike the wheel-
barrow, the pitchfork and the five-clawed
rotary garden hoe, the hammock has no
function. No socially redeeming one,
anyway.
The hammock is deliciously and specifi-
cally designed for the purpose of doing
exactly nothing. A hammock takes your
bruised and battered body and enfolds it to its
bosom. It is a personal cubbyhole, a private
cocoon, a woven womb of comfort, subject
only to the gentle nudges of a passing breeze.
What a wonderful place to contemplate the
scudding popcorn clouds; the botanical
ingenuity of leaf veins; the erratic arabesques
of passing butterflies; the loopy ululations of
a far-off pileated woodpecker.
Better still, what finer place to enjoy the
pastoral bliss and tranquillity you assumed
you'd draw from your garden before you
discovered the cruel truth about small-time,
amateur agriculture?
A night at the opera, dinner in a five star
restaurant, a fine wine, a good cigar, two
rinkside golds to a Red Wings game - I'd
trade 'em all for an uninterrupted hour or two
on a fine summer afternoon in a hammock
stretched between two apple trees
overlooking somebody else's garden.
The finest snooze you can ever hope to
have.
to the good old Dave's fast food chain
Wendy's.
But get this, as a means of paying for Tim
Horton's, Wendy's paid much of the price in
stock, so that the former owner now has a
higher percentage of Wendy's stock than
does good old Dave. Who owns what?
With brand loyalty frequently out the
window, we are left, even more so than in the
past, with service as one of the essential
attractions. Foreign-owned companies in
Canada are able to compete with Canadians
on price but a lot of them have made service
a high priority.
With the high level of travelling that I do,
you can be sure that service is high up on my
list of priorities.
One example that stands out. in my mind is
a little restaurant in Europe that I started
going to a few years back. I am only there
once a year but, when I do enter the door, I
am treated as if I were their main customer.
They remember where I am from, and even
what I ordered last time.
You can be sure that I also get an excellent
meal, and at a reasonable price, so now,
come hell or high water, I will manage to get
back to that restaurant for a meal. With
service like that, how can I not go there?
A Final Thought
The fact that man knows right from
wrong proves his intellectual superiority to
the other creatures; but the fact that he can
do wrong proves his moral inferiority to
any creature that cannot. — Mark Twain
She knows me well
For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather
—Christina Georgina Rossetti
My sister visited with me this past
weekend. This is a fairly rare occurrence as
the majority of my life she has been married
and living hours away. Thus the occasions
we spend together are infrequent, but they
have also been some of greatest pleasure —
and greatest frustration.
My sister and I have a relatively unique
relationship. Born 10 years before me, the
eldest in the family, she has been sib,
protector, nurturer and confidante. She railed
when I pestered her, but rallied with me
against my bullying older brother. She was a
young, hip mother, filling in where my
working mom couldn't, and a friend.
Now that maturity has tightened the
decade separating us, her instinctive
tendency to continue to nurture me is at
times, less appreciated. But, I value the
knowledge that in loving me by blood she is
one of the few people to whom I open my
Pandora's box of insecurities and just be
myself.
And I never doubt that she will keep
loving me.
It's sad to think that there are some,
perhaps, unfamiliar with the bond of which I
am speaking, and I find myself puzzled by
the tragedy of family feuds. Obviously with
the bull-headed German blood coursing
through the Ott household there have been
squabbles, but these were best described as
of the inconsequential variety.
Generally I feel blessed by the immediate
and in-law relations surrounding me. While
my own have long taken 'my flawed self as
they get me, those who have married into
and those who have let me in, embracne
. defects and all.
So much so, that I consider my sisters-in-
law to be my best friends. After all, most of
us have a great deal in common when
discussing the men in our lives.
Having had this for myself and
appreciating the value of such bolstering
companionship, I hope for the same for my
children.
Recently my two daughters had an outing
together and more than the souvenir they
presented me with, it was the realization that
they weren't just in each other's company,
but enjoyed themselves, that made me
happiest.
It's nice to see siblings bonding in some
way, rather than fighting over whose stereo
is the loudest and whose night it is for
dishes. Perhaps it is the idea that there will
always be someone who has known them
forever, yet loves them in spite, of that, who
understands their weaknesses and knows
how to be their strength, that pleases me.
Certainly my sister and I can get on each
other's nerves on occasion. But she has seen
me at my worst and was the loudest voice I
heard rooting for me to show my best.
There is no story that we haven't shared, and
probably know each other better than
ourselves. Distance has separated us from
the time I was nine years old, but it has
never altered what she brings me with each
visit — the sense of who I am and that I'm
okay .
Arthur Black
International Scene
By Raymond Canon
The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp